The modern family--the old man in baggy trousers and a frock-coat he
could not button if he tried to; the mother of figure distinctly
Victorian; the boys in flannel suits and collars up to their ears;
the girls in motor caps--are as incongruous in these mediaeval
dwellings as a party of Cook's tourists drinking bottled beer in the
streets of Pompeii.
The designer of "The Artistic Home" is right in keeping to still
life. In the artistic home--to paraphrase Dr. Watts--every prospect
pleases and only man is inartistic. In the picture, the artistic
bedroom, "in apple green, the bedstead of cherry-wood, with a touch
of turkey-red throughout the draperies," is charming. It need hardly
be said the bed is empty. Put a man or woman in that cherry-wood
bed--I don't care how artistic they may think themselves--the charm
would be gone. The really artistic party, one supposes, has a little
room behind, where he sleeps and dresses himself. He peeps in at the
door of this artistic bedroom, maybe occasionally enters to change
the roses.
Imagine the artistic nursery five minutes after the real child had
been let loose in it. I know a lady who once spent hundreds of
pounds on an artistic nursery. She showed it to her friends with
pride. The children were allowed in there on Sunday afternoons. I
did an equally silly thing myself not long ago. Lured by a furniture
catalogue, I started Robina in a boudoir.
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